New Zealand Readies to Vote as Polls Indicate Key Victory

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) -- New Zealanders are preparing to vote
for their next prime minister this week as John Key’s National
Party is projected to win a second term in government.

National received 53 percent support in a Roy Morgan
poll of 857 voters taken Nov. 7-18, with the main opposition
Labour Party backed by 24.5 percent. The government’s rating was
unchanged from a previous poll and would see National win more
than half the seats in parliament for the first time since 1993
if reflected in the Nov. 26 vote, the pollster’s website shows.

“There are a lot of New Zealanders saying the last three
years were tough, but boy the next three years won’t be a lot
better internationally,” Key, 50, said in a NewstalkZB radio
interview today. “We do need stability and we do need a
government that’s not going to put us further in hock.”

The poll results suggest a spat between Key and media last
week had no effect on voters’ opinion of the prime minister.
Public support for Key, a former head of foreign-exchange
trading at Merrill Lynch & Co., has hardly waned since he was
elected in 2008, even as the country recovers from earthquakes,
recession and its first credit rating downgrade in 13 years.

Key complained to authorities that a private conversation
with ACT Party candidate John Banks was unlawfully recorded by a
media worker. The Nov. 11 incident took place during a symbolic
“cup of tea” event in an Auckland coffee shop to highlight
Key’s endorsement of a party that could be an ally in parliament.

MMP Referendum

New Zealand also votes Saturday on whether to keep its
electoral process, which changed to a mixed member proportional
system from first-past-the-post in the 1996 election. The MMP
system requires governments to seek support from minor parties
if they win less than half of the popular vote.

The Green Party was the most popular minority in the Roy
Morgan poll, with 13 percent of support. Both the Maori and New
Zealand First parties tied on 3 percent. Under MMP, if a party
fails to win any electorates, it will still get parliamentary
seats if backed by at least 5 percent of the public vote.

“There is a real possibility that despite us polling
potentially a very large number, that the coalition of the
unwilling on the other side come together,” said Key, who plans
to vote against MMP.

Policy Clash

Voters are hoping Key will steer the economy through the
consequences of the euro-area debt crisis better than Labour
leader Phil Goff, 58.

“We don’t want an empty slogan -- ‘building a brighter
future’,” Goff said in an interview yesterday on Television New
Zealand. “We want to know how we’re going to do that. We’re
going to do that by long-term policies.”

Labour pledged a capital gains tax and income tax increases
for the highest earners to help pay for spending plans, and
rejected a government plan to sell as much as 49 percent of four
state-owned energy companies.

If re-elected, Key plans to carry into a second three-year
term his agenda to sell state assets, end budget deficits and
create 150,000 jobs.

“Labour’s proposition for New Zealanders is: ‘We’ll put
more debt, more on the credit card, and we hope we’ll work it
all out’,” Key said in a television interview yesterday.